Conventional computing devices often incorporate one or more communication interfaces for communicating with other devices. Often these communication interfaces conform to communication standards, such as RS-232, RS-422, X.25, V.35 and IEEE 1394 communication standards. Communication standards are established in an attempt to assure that the computing devices conforming to one of the standards will be able to successfully communicate with each other. For example, each communication standard typically defines a specific set of input and output signals, e.g., data signals, clock signals, flow control signals, and the like.
It is common for a device to implement only a subset of the signals defined by a communication standard. For example, a device may implement a subset of the RS-232 standard by providing compliant clock and data signals, while not implementing the flow control signals. Moreover, it is common for fully compliant and partially compliant devices to be connected. In this situation, only a subset of the signals provided by the fully compliant device is used for communication between the fully and partially compliant devices. As a result, a technician or other individual often must manually wire electrical connectors, e.g., pins, that carry the unused signals of the fully compliant device to appropriate voltage levels for the devices to properly communicate. For example, unused flow control signals may need to be manually wired to appropriate voltages, e.g., ±12 volts, to permit communication.
For complex communication interfaces, this manual wiring process may be relatively complex and labor-intensive, which may lead to incorrect wiring of the interface. As a result, errors or complete communication failure may occur, and the technician may be forced to return to the devices and attempt to identify and manually correct the wiring error.